Poetry/Transcript
Transcript Onscreen text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby. Tim reads to the camera in a spot light, wearing a black beret. TIM: I saw the robots of my generation; destroyed by bad programming, beeping hysterical; wiring themselves in the garage at dawn looking for an AC adapter; the absolute heart of the lithium-ion battery, guaranteed to run for a thousand years. Tim is shown in a close-up profile. He is shown in various poses talking to the camera. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Dig it, brothers and sisters. The lights come on to reveal Tim sitting at his computer desk in a room with Moby at his side. His computer alerts him that he has a new email. He clicks to open it. The email is displayed. The email reads "Acme email - inbox; From: gab051474@myefunspace.com; To: queries@brainpop.com; Subject: poetry". TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, what can you tell me about poetry? From, Gabriella. Chances are you're already pretty familiar with some forms of poetry. From the nursery rhymes you learned as a kid to the song lyrics you listen to now, your head is probably filled with poetry. Humpty Dumpty is shown falling from his brick wall within the speech bubble of a mother talking to her daughter. A woman is shown belting out a song from the earphones of a boy who is dancing. MOBY: Beep? TIM: Poetry is any writing that uses words for their sound and rhythm as well as their meaning. Ordinary writing, like you'd find in a textbook, newspaper article, or novel, is called prose. Tim is in the room talking to the camera with Moby beside him. Text from a Sherlock Holmes story is shown on the screen. On screen text reads: prose. TIM: It expresses ideas in simple, direct language. Poetry, on the other hand, usually emphasizes artistic elements like rhythm, rhyme, and repetition. A simple picture of small people in a crude boat at sea is shown juxtaposed with the staggered lines from a poem by Edward Lear. Text reads: Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live: Their heads are green, and their hands are blue; And they went to sea in a sieve. Text reads: poetry. TIM: You can measure a poem's rhythm with something called meter. On screen text reads: meter. TIM: Meter takes into account how many syllables are in each line, what the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables is—stuff like that. For example, the English poet Alexander Pope wrote in iambic pentameter. A man dressed in clothing from another century is shown. He is wearing a turban and a shirt with a thick, white collar. Text reads: Alexander Pope. Text reads: iambic pentameter. TIM: That's a popular type of meter with ten syllables per line, and with every unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Ten dots appear at the bottom of the screen. A bouncing ball dot appears on screen to jump across the top of each dot. The first dot becomes yellow and the second turns red. The dots continue to alternate in color as the dot bounces across them. An Alexander Pope poem appears on screen and the bouncing ball dot jumps across the words as it did with dots before. Text reads: Relentless walls! whose darksome round contains repentant sighs, and voluntary pains: Ye rugged rocks! which holy knees have worn; Ye grots and caverns shagg'd with horrid thorn! TIM: The rhythm of a poem in iambic pentameter goes, "ba-BUMP, ba-BUMP, ba-BUMP, ba-BUMP, ba-BUMP." "Relentless walls! whose darksome round contains repentant sighs, and voluntary pains: Ye rugged rocks! which holy knees have worn; Ye grots and caverns shagg'd with horrid thorn!" That's her anthem. The image of Alexander Pope appears at the bottom of the screen. TIM: You'll notice that repetition comes into play here. Text reads: repetition. TIM: You can see the first two lines start with a three-syllable word beginning with the letter "r", and the use of "ye" repeats at the start of the second two lines. The Pope poem is shown again. The words 'relentless' and 'repentant' are both highlighted orange. The word 'ye' is highlighted red at the start of the third and fourth lines. MOBY: Beep! Tim is sitting at the computer with Moby beside him. TIM: Right, right, I was just getting to rhyme. Text reads: rhyme. TIM: Rhyme is the repetition of similar sounds, usually at the end of lines of poetry. "Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live: Their heads are green, and their hands are blue; And they went to sea in a sieve." The simple picture of children in a boat with poetry is shown again. The words "few" and "blue" are made blue at the ends of the first and third lines. And the words "live" and "sieve" at the ends of the second and fourth lines are made red. TIM: Not all poems rhyme, but ones that do usually have what's called a rhyme scheme, or pattern. Text reads: rhyme scheme. TIM: Let's take a look at that Pope poem again. "Relentless walls! whose darksome round contains repentant sighs, and voluntary pains: Ye rugged rocks! which holy knees have worn; Ye grots and caverns shagg'd with horrid thorn!" The Alexander Pope poem is shown again. The words "contains" and "pains" are made red. And the words "worn" and "thorn" are made yellow. TIM: You can see the pattern—it's divided up into pairs of rhyming lines, or couplets. The first two lines are highlighted in dark red and the second two lines are highlighted in brown. Text reads: couplets TIM: Mark each different rhyme with a letter, and you have the rhyme scheme. The letter "A" appears beside the first two lines in red. The letter "B" appears beside the third and fourth lines in yellow. Text reads: A A B B. TIM: Not all poems have rhyme or meter, though. A lot of modern poets write in free verse, which has no set meter or rhyme scheme—the lines are simply broken up the way the poet sees fit. A poem by Wallace Stevens appears. Text reads: You are humped higher and higher, black as stone - You sit with your head like a carving in space And the little green cat is a bug in the grass. Text reads: free verse. TIM: "You are humped higher and higher, black as stone—You sit with your head like a carving in space And the little green cat is a bug in the grass." MOBY: Beep? TIM: That's a good question. People write poetry because it can express certain feelings and ideas better than prose. A person with a furrowed brow dressed all in black scribbles lines on a page. A thought bubble shows human forms in vibrant colors with lines of action shooting out from their bodies. TIM: Poets often use their craft to make you think about an experience in a new and interesting way. It's sort of like… painting a picture with language. Check out this piece by Emily Dickinson: "It sifts from leaden sieves / it powders all the wood / it fills with alabaster wool / the wrinkles of the road." Can you tell what she's talking about here? The person with the furrowed brow briefly appears and is then replaced with a poem by Emily Dickinson. Text reads: It sifts from leaden sieves It powders all the wood It fills with alabaster wool The wrinkles of the road MOBY: Beep? TIM: Right. Snow. To make us see and feel the snowfall, Dickinson uses the poetic tool of metaphor. The lines of poetry from Emily Dickinson begin to flicker with snowflakes and clouds move in from below. Text reads: metaphor. TIM: That's when you compare one thing to something else. In this poem, snow's not just frozen water—it's "alabaster wool" that "sifts from leaden sieves". MOBY: Beep. Beep. Beep. TIM: It sort of does make you shiver, reading this. MOBY: Beep? TIM: Poems can often seem difficult to understand when you first look at them. Often it's because poets like toying with different meanings of words and phrases. So when you read a poem, make sure you read it thoroughly and carefully. And if possible, you should read it aloud to get a better feel for the sound and rhythm of the words. A boy is shown closely reading from a sheet of paper. He is then shown reading emphatically as if performing. TIM: By paying close attention, you'll have a better chance of understanding what the poet is trying to say. MOBY: Beep! TIM: You… You've got a poem? MOBY: Beep. Moby holds up his notebook toward Tim. A page from the notebook contains a long series of ones and zeroes. TIM: Uh… I think you misspelled "thermonuclear" here. A finger points to a section of ones and zeroes. Category:BrainPOP Transcripts Category:BrainPOP English Transcripts